As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
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Monday, 29 July 2013

‘Accidents Happen’ by Louise Millar

Published by Pan,

11 April 2013.

ISBN: 978-0-330-54501-3

How does the saying go? Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t
mean they aren’t out to get you.

Kate
Parker is a bundle of nerves, and as the story unfolds we learn that she has a
lot to be nervous about. Her parents died on her wedding day in a horrendous
freak accident. Her husband was murdered in a random opportunist robbery. Her
house has been burgled twice in a few months. She is the person to whom one in
a million accidents always seem to happen. And to cap it all, her in-laws think
her permanent state of anxiety is damaging her young son, and she’s afraid they
may be right.

Kate
deals with the anxiety by playing a numbers game. She researches the odds against
specific accidents and disasters and tries to choose the least perilous course
of action. So she doesn’t cycle on the road; she refuses to fly; she insists on
collecting her son from school although his friends all walk unaccompanied; she
constantly upgrades the security around her house. Then she meets Jago, who has
an unorthodox way help her kick the numbers habit and regain her confidence.

A
problem I sometimes have with suspense novels is that the sense of menace I
feel entitled to expect is so low-key that I’m unaware of it till the
denouement. That is decidedly not the case in Accidents Happen. It’s
clear from the outset that the danger is real and Kate’s fears are justified;
someone is out to get her, and it’s not just her controlling in-laws. But the
narrative is pitch-perfect; slivers of action serve to misdirect as much as
inform the reader, and when the whole truth is finally revealed, it comes as a
delicious shock; I certainly didn’t see it coming.

A
writer acquaintance of mine has a theory that in the best fiction the
characters don’t know they’re in a story, but simply get on with living. That’s
what happens here; as well as reacting to events, people connect with each
other, growing closer and drawing back; relationships develop and change, and
everyone has a layered existence which feeds into the main narrative line. When
Kate’s ‘haunting’ is over and her recovery is well under way, there’s a sense
that they will all go right on with their lives.

Millar
draws those lives with a sure hand against a rich background of tension, and
creates a taut, edgy page-turner of a novel with plenty of surprises and a
killer of a resolution. If there’s a flaw, it’s that the ending is tied up a
little too neatly and the villain’s comeuppance is a little too drastic. But
that takes nothing away from the skill with which she plays the reader en route
for that ending.

------

Reviewer: Lynne
Patrick

Louise Millarwas brought up in Scotland. She began her journalism
career in mainly music and film magazines, working as a sub-editor for
Kerrang!, Smash Hits, the NME and Empire. She later moved into features,
working as a commissioning editor on women's magazines. She has written for
Marie Claire, Red, Psychologies, Stella (Telegraph magazine), the Independent, the
Observer, Glamour, Stylist and Eve.

She lives in London with her
husband and daughters.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen,
and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but
never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher
for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now
burgeoning.

She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house
groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

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About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.